Various mechanisms exist to allow computers and executing software applications to interact. For example, remote procedure call (“RPC”) protocols have long existed that allow a program on one computer to cause a program on another computer to be executed, and various object-oriented architectures such as CORBA (“Common Object Request Broker Architecture”) and DCOM (“Distributed Component Object Model”) provide similar capabilities. In addition, a variety of middleware programs have been implemented to connect separate applications (often of distinct types and from unrelated sources) to allow communication. For example, various EDI (“Electronic Data Interchange”) networks exist that provide standard mechanisms to allow a computer system of one user of the network to send data to a computer system of another user of the network.
The widespread popularity of the World Wide Web (“Web”) has provided additional opportunities for computers to inter-communicate. For example, much current Web use involves users interactively requesting Web pages from Web servers (e.g., via executing Web browser applications of the users) and receiving the requested information in response. In addition to such interactive user specification of requested information, there is also growing use of the Web to support the programmatic interaction of remote applications to exchange information via defined APIs (“application program interfaces”), referred to as Web services.
Web services allow heterogeneous applications and computers to interact, and can be defined and implemented using a variety of underlying protocols and techniques. For example, some Web service implementations return data in XML (“extensible Markup Language”) format using HTTP (“HyperText Transport Protocol”) in response to a Web service invocation request specified as a URI (“Uniform Resource Identifier”), such as a URL (“Uniform Resource Locator”) that includes a specified operation and one or more query parameters. In other implementations, additional underlying protocols are used for various purposes, such as SOAP (“Simple Object Access Protocol”) for standard message exchange, WSDL (“Web Services Description Language”) for description of service invocations, and UDDI (“Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration service”) for discovery of available services.
Although Web services allow various applications and computers to interact, the current implementations and uses of Web services have various problems. For example, current Web service implementations are typically designed with only a very limited number of predefined applications interacting, and do not typically address a variety of issues for wide-scale interaction of providers and potential consumers of Web services. In addition, current Web service implementations do not typically provide effective means for potential consumers to discover or locate Web services that are desired or that may be of interest, such as via current UDDI-based implementations that may identify a connection point for one or more Web services but that do not typically provide any of a variety of other types of information related to the Web services to assist potential consumers (e.g., indications of usage by others, such as a ranking relative to other Web services; indications of comments and/or reviews by others; information related to the past provision of the Web service and/or the provider of the Web service, such as average up-time and response time; etc.). Current Web service implementations also do not typically provide sufficient assurance to potential consumers that prospective providers of Web services will reliably and accurately provide desired Web services, do not typically provide sufficient security for providers of Web services to ensure that their Web services will be made available only to authorized consumers and only in accordance with any conditions specified by the providers, do not typically provide easy-to-use mechanisms to allow Web service providers to collect specified payment for the use of their Web services by consumers, do not typically allow Web service providers to manage and monitor the use of their Web services, do not typically allow Web service consumers to monitor the use of provided Web services on their behalf, etc.
Thus, it would be beneficial to provide a solution that addresses these and other problems associated with the use of Web services and/or that otherwise facilitates the interaction of computer systems and executing applications.